Devices · Apple desktops and laptops
Macs go wrong in ways PCs do not. Encryption was already running before the machine was first switched on. On most models the flash is fixed to the logic board. A Fusion iMac spreads one volume over two separate disks. Downloadable software gives up at the first of the three. Send it in from Plymouth, Devon or Cornwall, include the password, and none of the three stands in the way.
You will be talking to an engineer
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| What shows up | What that points to | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A folder with a question mark, flashing | No disk it can start from exists | Keep it off and have the disk tested |
| A circle with a line through it on start-up | macOS exists but refuses to load | Check the disk first, then the container |
| First Aid reports errors then stops | APFS damage beyond what Disk Utility fixes | Take the image, decide afterwards |
| com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error -119930868 | The APFS volume refuses to mount | Normally read back off a clone |
| Disk Utility returns File system verify or repair failed (-69845) | macOS has run out of options | Power it down and stop there |
| Boot loop that started with a macOS update | Damage to firmware or container, with the files beneath intact | Usually recoverable |
Whatever arrives is booked in under a case number on the day it reaches the bench. An engineer then works out the actual fault, and that part is free. You get a plain answer on what can come off the drive and what cannot, followed by one price in writing. Nothing further happens until you have read it and agreed.
Wherever the key is kept — in FileVault, in the T2 chip, or in Apple silicon's Secure Enclave — everything under it is ciphertext. Supply the password and the job becomes an ordinary one. We take the image in a form that can still be decrypted afterwards.
A disk that comes out on screws gets imaged as anything else would. Where flash is soldered in place, or the board has died, the work moves to component level. Those chips keep handing over their contents long after the machine last powered up.
On a Fusion iMac the opening of a document may sit on the SSD with its ending on the hard disk. We image each drive separately, then work out the CoreStorage or APFS arrangement holding them together. What returns is complete files, not the fragments they were kept as.
Thinking it over costs you nothing. Everything the drive gave up is listed for you before any invoice exists, and the bill only follows your go-ahead. Files travel back on media bought in for your job, with return carriage paid at this end, and the case stays on the bench until you confirm they open on your own computer.
About the figures: nothing is published by Apple on a per-model basis, and no public reliability study covers soldered Mac flash, Backblaze's included. An honest 'MacBook failure rate' cannot be printed by anyone. Only Apple holds those figures.
The owner had already been told at the Apple Store that the iMac was beyond saving. Inside it sat a Fusion Drive — a flash module and a spinning disk, which macOS presents as a single volume — and the mechanical half was failing. Each part was copied on its own, the pairing between them was worked out again, leaving a design studio with ten years of its work.
Yes. Encryption comes from FileVault, from the T2 chip or from the Secure Enclave in an M-series machine, and only two things open it: your login password, or your recovery key. Lacking both, the volume cannot be read here or by anybody else.
Generally no. A recovery question was put to a repair business, and a repairer answered it. Their fix is a new logic board; the original leaves their premises with your files still living on it. Getting those files off is a different trade, done with different equipment.
The Finder shows one icon while two disks sit underneath it — one small SSD and one slower spinning disk. Any single file may have blocks on both. Send one half of the pair and fragments are all that come back. We image each, then reconstruct the map tying them together.
Usually, yes. It becomes component work on the board itself. Provided you supply the password and the encryption chain is unbroken, the chips get read where they sit. Removing the flash and reading it away from the board is the one approach that fails.
The diagnosis is free, and it comes back as a list: which files read, which do not, and what getting them off would take. Until then, leave the drive unplugged.